Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

workers as beneficiaries for land distribution and by
lending hand to talk with the management to allow
land surveyors to enter the area. The officials actually
have positive possibility to resolve tension by taking role
as negotiator or mediator, instead of blocking the land
reform process.
Roles of the Social Actors
NGO’s Roles
With the help of organizers sent by the NGOs, peasants
generally know that land transfer is the assigned job of
the government as stipulated by the law. Well keeping
the law, the peasants have the very rights to remind the
government to implement their task and accountability,
through dialogues and mass mobilization. The standard
community organizing activities at barangay or interbarangay
level include: 1) investigation to targeted areas,
2) contacts building in the area, 3) meetings in the area
to start organizing the peasants, 4) petition preparation
for the land coverage, 5) paralegal training to selected
peasants to inform and strengthen them about their
rights, 6) small group pressures through “dialogue” with
the government and 7) mass mobilization to pressurise
the government to follow the distribution process in
diverse matched occasions such as the national agrarian
reform program anniversary, the campaign of national
level NGO networking to oust the DAR secretary, etc.
Accordingly, there are three main points how strategy
was developed: 1) to pressurise the government, the
NGOs apply dialogue and mass mobilization, along
with mass supports of the beneficiaries, 2) in order to
increase pressurising strength of the mass, they built
alliances with other peasant groups in the adjacent
villages, 3) to grasp stronger pressure, the NGOs link
the struggle at the barangay with the national; not
only in discourse but also bringing peasants directly at
national stage’s struggle.
Unlike the NGO’s involvement in Negros, however, in
the Tarlac case, along with the initial stage of peasant
organizing activity, the NGO took an option of making
alliance with political party Akbayan that supported
the peasant cause. The NGO motivated the peasant
associations to support the party’s target at having three
out of two seats in the Congress in the national election
in May 2004. This option did not happen in the Negros
case.
The Role of the Peasant Group
Though the period of intense struggle of one is slightly
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longer than the other––the Negros case took four years,
the Tarlac case about three years––, both represent
political struggles with a parallel intensity that they
concentrated energy to reach the same goal of land
ownership or land occupation transfer.
However, some diverging points in the performance
of the groups in both cases are put forward. First,
the understanding about the need for conducting
social movement. Both peasant groups have different
understanding about how social movement strategy
should be waged for. In the Tarlac case, when the social
movement was on the way, many among peasants still
did not believe the land could be distributed. This is
in contrast to that of many among the Nagasi peasants
who have longer kept struggling for the distribution
even though they knew that the land would not be just
left that way by landowner. Although they faced internal
problems of the pro-landlord (Negros) and pro-land
administrator rival peasants (Tarlac), their eventual
results in the breadth of social movement are different
in which the scope of the strategy of the Negros case
was wider with diverse tactics for long struggle.
Second, the strength of the peasant groups. Nagasi peasants
reserved strength in fighting against the Hacienda
Esperanza’s management. They may have better future
as compared to the Tarlac peasants, whose struggle’s
performance tends to slide down. The land dispute in
Negros case reached the first peak of the conflict after the
landlord represented by the management felt exhausted
because all means available had been exploited, either
legal means, using armed security guard forces, or
hiring goons. However, the lingering conflict shifted
to erupt in the area, instead, with vehement pressures
to the landlord. It was no longer exchange of legal
position and verbal contestation, as the peasants began
harvesting the crop, an action that provoked landowner
to send guards, and as expected, simultaneously the
management also did the same in return. Despite
such pressure, peasants sustained harvesting actions in
addition to coupling it with committing the corporation
to engage legal battle.
Third, the framing social movement with cultural
base. Unlike the Tarlac case, the Negros case peasant
community enjoyed the intervention of the NGO
that was led by a Catholic priest from the independent
Philippine church. The NGO has evocatively enclosed
the peasant social movement with fundamental religious
symbols of contextualised liberation spirit.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows